Disarming Detective (4 page)

She stuffed the last bite of her sandwich in her mouth and got out of the car, drawing a deep breath that told him she wasn’t used to the heavy humidity. “I thought we were going to the marsh?”

“We are.” They were standing off the side of the road, bracketed by hundred-year-old live oaks. Spanish moss dangled from every branch almost to the tall grass below, like a fuzzy gray curtain obscuring the path behind it. “Follow me. And stay on the trail. Snakes hide in the grass.”

Behind the trees, the dirt path was packed down. Locals used it often to bike and walk or to get to the marshes for fishing. Right now, in the midday heat, the path was empty.

It was also narrow, so Ella walked behind him. He could sense her taking in the details, so he wasn’t surprised when she asked, “Is the area we’re going to pretty populated?”

“We definitely get locals looking for redfish, but not too many tourists wander back here. We won’t get out as far as where the body was found. To do that, we’d need a boat. The trail loops back around, which is where most of the runners take it, but there’s a split that goes farther out, about to the point the water will come up to at high tide. From there, I can show you where we found Theresa.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “You’re wondering if this guy knew the area in order to get back here?”

“That’s part of it. Also trying to determine how likely it is he’d run into other people. How much risk he’d take dumping the body where he did. Things like that help me figure out his personality.”

“Hmm.” Logan dropped back so he could walk beside her and watch her face as she talked. They were a close fit on the narrow trail. Every few steps her arm brushed his and the feel of her skin fired way too many nerve endings to life. “From what I know of profiling, you’ll be able to tell me things like he’s a white male in his twenties.”

From the reaction he’d gotten when he’d suggested bringing in a profiler to his chief, he knew skeptics joked that was all profilers were good for—looking at a crime scene and predicting that the serial killer was a white male in his twenties. Which happened to be the most common age range and race for serial killers.

Ella’s mouth quirked, but with annoyance or amusement, he couldn’t tell.

“The basic concepts behind profiling are actually pretty simple,” she said. “Take you, for example. Things like your upbringing, your intelligence, your personality—all of that contributed to why you became not just a cop, but a homicide detective. Creating a criminal personality profile analyzes that. I look at the evidence—things like the way he dumped the body—and figure out details of his personality. From that, I can say what kind of job that kind of personality would likely pick, what kind of environment he’d live in, if he’d be married, that sort of thing.” She shrugged. “Make sense?”

“You make it sound easy.”

“No, it’s definitely not easy. But it is pretty grounded in psychology.” As they reached the end of the trail, she turned to face him, and he instantly became hyperaware of how short the distance between them really was. “If I tell you he’s a white male in his twenties, there’ll be a reason behind it besides averages.”

Turning again, she squinted out over the marsh, her expression slipping back to serious, and after allowing himself another few seconds to watch her, Logan did the same.

He’d been to this spot hundreds of times before, but in the sudden stillness, he saw it as she might. The feeling of intense calm that came from being the only people there, then the slow realization that nature was moving all around. The murky waters, lapping against tall grasses. The curious expression of a wading egret, the distant lump indicating an alligator underneath.

“It’s pretty quiet,” Ella said.

He could almost hear her thoughts, calculating details about the killer. He’d picked an isolated spot where there wouldn’t likely be tourists. The body had been found in the morning, so the killer must have dumped Theresa before dusk, when the alligators would’ve been feeding. A smart killer. Patient.

Logan felt the blood drain from his face as he realized what else it probably told Ella. The killer knew specific details about the marsh. “He’s a local, isn’t he?”

Ella turned, and her deep brown eyes seemed to bore holes through him. “He’s not a typical tourist passing through for a week or two. He could be a local, either here or in one of the neighboring towns. At the very least, he’s been holed up here for a few months, getting familiar with the town and trolling for victims.”

A string of curses burst from deep within, a sour, sick feeling that he might actually know the person who had burned and then murdered his sister’s friend.

The sick feeling persisted when his cell phone trilled and the display read Chief Patterson. He hadn’t even finished “Hello” before the chief was yelling loudly enough that there was no question Ella could hear every word.

“Why am I hearing about you bringing the
FBI
to Oakville for your ridiculous serial killer theory? How often do you need to hear orders before you follow them, Logan? We’re investigating
Theresa’s
murder. We are
not
inventing more victims and we are
definitely
not scaring the whole town by turning an isolated crime into a huge spree!”

“Chief—”

“I’m going to tell you this one last time, Logan, and you’d better listen. There’s only so far that nepotism can protect your job. You drop this serial killer angle
right now
.
Send this profiler home
and get back to the station.”

“Chief, listen—”

The sudden dial tone cut him off. As he tucked his phone back inside his pocket, he prayed he’d made the right decision in bringing Ella here, prayed that one crazy theory wasn’t going to bring down the career he’d fought so hard for.

Chapter Three

“Why isn’t she on a plane?” Chief Patterson folded his arms on his desk, glaring with an intensity he seemed to save just for Logan.

Chief Patterson was his father’s age. He’d headed up the Oakville PD for twenty years and his dislike of anyone with the last name Greer came from way before Logan’s time. Part of it had to do with the Greers’ long history of prominent positions in Oakville. And part of it had to do with the chief courting his mother before his father won her away.

Logan looked through the glass door of the chief’s office to where Ella sat perched on a chair along the wall, attracting attention from far too many members of their all-male police force. Logan scowled. She was here to consult on
his
case.

“Logan,” Chief Patterson snapped, making his head whip back around. “What part of my orders was unclear to you?”

“Listen, Chief, Agent Cortez agrees this crime looks serial.”

The chief’s scowl deepened, intensifying the lines that raked across his forehead and bracketed his mouth. “I don’t care
what
she thinks. I don’t buy into that profiling hokum. And I am
not
going to scare away all our tourism revenue with some ridiculous theory. If you keep pursuing this angle, I’m taking you off the case. I’ll assign it to someone else.”

But Logan knew that none of the other detectives in their small police force would want to touch the case, not after he’d had his hands on it. Just like none of them wanted to risk the chief’s ire by partnering with a cop named Greer. The uniforms joked that the position of his partner was like a revolving door. Right now, he was the only member of the force without a partner—which was true for most of his tenure as a detective.

But it didn’t matter if there was another detective who’d take this case; Logan wasn’t handing it over to anyone.

The chief didn’t give him a chance to say that, merely held up a hand. “There’s nothing your father can do about it. I won’t be cowed by political pressure. This is
my
office. I’m your boss and you’d better get used to it.”

Logan clamped down hard on his instant response. Not once had he ever used his family’s name—or his father’s position as mayor of Oakville—to get ahead in his job. If anything, they had held him back.

He fought to keep his voice level. “And this is
my
case. I can’t ignore a potential lead because it might hurt tourism.”

“Trying to invent a serial killer is
not
a lead,” the chief barked. “If you find another body, then it might become a lead, but we don’t have any active missing-persons cases, much less any other victims. So, you’re
not
spending resources chasing this. Send the profiler home. Get back to work figuring out who had it in for Theresa Crowley.”

The chief leaned back in his chair and opened the file in front of him, which meant Logan was being dismissed.

He didn’t move. The problem with the chief’s plan was that no one had it in for Theresa, or at least no one in the state of Florida. Theresa had spent her entire trip with his sister and their family, so she hadn’t had time to meet anyone unsavory. And it was unlikely she’d run into someone she knew on her drive to the airport.

Every investigative instinct in his body was clamoring that Theresa’s killer hadn’t known her personally, and that if he wasn’t stopped, he was going to strike again. To solve the case, he needed Ella. And he owed it to his sister to make sure Theresa’s killer was caught.

The chief looked up from his file, raising his eyebrows as he glanced pointedly from Logan to the door.

Instead, Logan took a deep breath and did something he’d sworn he would never do. Something that might well be career suicide.

“Fine. But if you insist I stop working with Agent Cortez and another body
does
turn up, I’m going to the paper to tell them we had a profiler here and you sent her home.” He didn’t need to add that because of his last name, the story was guaranteed front-page coverage.

A deep red flush spread across the chief’s cheeks all the way to his ears, and when he spoke, his voice was an octave too high. “Fine, Logan. You want to play it this way? Then if you’re wrong and no other body turns up, but you’re too busy chasing an imaginary serial murderer to catch the real killer, I’ll be the one talking to the press. And it’ll be to tell them why you’ve handed in your badge.”

* * *

W
HAT
WAS
SHE
THINKING
?

Ella stared up at Logan as he held the car door for her to get out and follow him into his parents’ house for dinner. When he’d initially told her he had dinner plans with his family, she’d expected to be eating at the hotel’s tiny restaurant by herself. But Logan’s Southern-boy manners had him inviting her along, and his Southern-boy charm had her stupidly agreeing.

Now that Logan had told his family she was coming and it was too late to change her mind, she wished she’d gone back to the hotel instead. It had been ages since she’d eaten with her own parents and two younger brothers back in Indiana; joining the family of a homicide detective she barely knew was just strange. She wasn’t even inside and she was already uncomfortable.

Logan was still standing with his hand on the car door. “You planning to sit in there all evening?”

“And miss the chance to meet this famous family of yours?” She managed a smile as she climbed out of the car. “Not likely.”

“Great,” Logan muttered, shutting the door and escorting her to the house.

It was a big white colonial with columns in the front, surrounded by magnolia trees. It looked as if it belonged in the Old South, so Ella wasn’t surprised when the door opened to reveal a foyer that resembled a smaller-scale version of something from
Gone with the Wind
.

This was where Logan had grown up? It was a far cry from the blue-collar neighborhood surrounded by wheat fields where she’d spent her childhood. She wondered what path had taken him from this to becoming a homicide detective.

“Logan!”

The woman who opened the door and wrapped Logan in an immediate hug appeared to be in her early sixties. Dark hair streaked with silver was pulled into a twist and when she let Logan go, Ella realized he had his mother’s eyes.

“Mom, this is Ella Cortez. She’s consulting with me on my case at work. Ella, this is my mom, Diana Greer.”

Ella had expected a dainty handshake from the woman in the pressed khakis and green blouse the same shade as her eyes, but what she got was the kind of tight hug usually reserved for long-lost relatives. “Nice to meet you,” she choked out.

“Come in, come in.” Diana led them through the foyer and a formal living room back to a connected kitchen and family room that looked casual and lived-in.

This was more like the way she might have imagined Logan’s childhood home, with the paperbacks stacked on an end table, a big TV on mute against the far wall, and family pictures lining the walls. Ella resisted the urge to take a closer look at Logan as a boy.

“Logan, your father is just finishing up his speech, and then we’ll all sit down for dinner. Ella, would you like something to drink? An iced tea?”

“Sure.”

“Logan?”

“No thanks, Mom.” Logan sank onto a long couch positioned against the wall.

Diana poured an iced tea, then handed it to Ella. “So, Ella, tell me about yourself. What do you do that you’re working with Logan?”

Ella settled into the chair across from Logan, and smiled at his mom. “Well, I’m with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit in Virginia. I can’t really talk about the case, but basically, I create profiles of unknown offenders.”

“Sounds mysterious.” She glanced over at her son. “Logan, before I forget, do you remember Laura Jameson? She just moved back to town and she doesn’t know a lot of people her age. I was talking to her mother the other night at a function and I told her you’d love to take Laura out for dinner tomorrow. I’ve got her number in the other room for you.”

Logan let out a long sigh, a hint of red visible despite the scruff on his cheeks. “Mom, you’ve got to stop doing this.”

“What? It’s one date.”

“I’m in the middle of a case. I don’t have time for one date.”